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Ron Conway seemingly stays on sidelines in SF supervisor campaigns

Investor and philanthropist Ron Conway is seemingly staying on the sidelines.

Investor and philanthropist Ron Conway is seemingly staying on the sidelines.

Photo: Noah Berger / Special To The Chronicle

Photo: Noah Berger / Special To The Chronicle

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Investor and philanthropist Ron Conway is seemingly staying on the sidelines.

Investor and philanthropist Ron Conway is seemingly staying on the sidelines.

Photo: Noah Berger / Special To The Chronicle

Ron Conway seemingly stays on sidelines in SF supervisor campaigns

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Billionaire tech investor Ron Conway, whose ability to raise big money for moderate candidates and causes made him Public Enemy No. 1 among the city’s left-leaning politicos, has seemingly vanished from the local November election landscape.

Or has he?

Not according to Conway’s longtime political nemesis, Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who insists that Conway is still in play “even if you can’t see him.”

“He is 100 percent, and through proxies, engaged in this election and doing everything he can to defeat progressive candidates,” Peskin charged when asked last week about Conway’s activities.

Conway first surfaced as a major local player during the 2011 election of Mayor Ed Lee, helping to channel hundreds of thousands of dollars into the campaign war chests of moderate candidates and causes — and against progressive anti-tech causes and incumbents.

In addition to Lee, Conway and his band of like-minded donors helped elect London Breed to the Board of Supervisors and David Chiu to the state Assembly. They also helped defeat progressive former Supervisor David Campos and Supervisor Jane Kim when they sought higher office.

Conway and his fellow Airbnb investors also were big in the move to make the city’s tax code more tech-friendly and in the fight over short-term rental controls.

Over time, however, Conway became the lightning rod for the left, who cast him as part of the “billionaires who control City Hall.” But his attempt to thwart Peskin’s return to City Hall in 2015 was a resounding defeat.

With the passing of Lee in December, Conway immediately began pushing his friend Breed for the mayor’s job — only to find that his presence had become a liability.

And while Conway continued to raise money for Breed, he did so quietly, with as few fingerprints as possible. Still, his wife gave $200,000 to defeat Breed’s mayoral rival Kim, ostensibly over her vote years earlier to reinstate Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi following his domestic violence conviction.

This time out, Conway said he’s moved away from the local fray and is “almost wholly focused on what we need to do nationally to take back the House for the Democrats and stop Trump,” spending a million dollars on get-out-the-vote efforts and gun control.

“I would think that’s a priority that progressives would agree with me on,” Conway said.

But while Conway may be on the sidelines locally — not having personally spent money in any of the local races — the political action committee he helped form is still running hard.

Progress San Francisco, a moderate business, labor and tech PAC launched in 2015 to bolster Lee’s agenda, has poured more than $1.5 million into helping moderate District Four supervisor candidate Jessica Ho and District Six candidates Christine Johnson and Sonja Trauss.

Office remodel: UC President Janet Napolitano is spending more than $1 million to retool her office staff after stinging criticism last year from Sacramento lawmakers over their handling of a state audit.

The first step was to bring in Huron Consulting Group on a $735,000 contract to give the office a once-over.

Photo: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times 2017

UC President Janet Napolitano is spending more than $1 million to renovate her office.

UC President Janet Napolitano is spending more than $1 million to...

Based on recommendations from Huron, Napolitano has just hired a veteran communications and public relations expert — Claire Holmes — to a revived post as the $360,000-a-year senior vice president of external relations and communications.

It’s a nice salary but less than the $374,625 that Dan Dooley (husband of Gov. Jerry Brown’s chief of staff, Dianna Dooley) made before the position was eliminated in 2014.

Napolitano has faced some rough going since an independent investigation found her office interfered with a state audit of its spending habits, findings that contributed to the departure of two of her trusted aides.

That prompted Napolitano to hire Huron to re-evaluate her operation. Now, based on firm’s recommendation, the heads of the communications and external affairs units will report to Holmes, who in turn will report to Napolitano.

Halloween horror: Peninsula reader Tru Love (no joke) tells us her 12-year-old son was trick-or-treating on Halloween night when a homeowner on the 2600 block of Cowper Street in Palo Alto handed him a bag of peanut M&M’s with a message on the wrapper urging a vote for Stacey Ashlund for local school board.

“Halloween is for kids, not politics,” Love says. “Who does that? How rude.”

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX-TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call 415-777-8815, or email matierandross@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @matierandross